


Dried Blood (Hiatus)

by autumnghost



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Bittersweet Ending, Blood and Gore, Explicit Language, Fluff, Graphic Description, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, M/M, Mention of past characters - Freeform, Protective Ash Lynx, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 03:04:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17398814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumnghost/pseuds/autumnghost
Summary: Three days.That's all Ash and Eiji have left to find a cure before the unthinkable happens.How far would you go to keep the love of your life safe?





	Dried Blood (Hiatus)

**Author's Note:**

> There's already been apocalypse fics about Banana Fish, but I wanted to write my take on it and you know me, I love angst. :)

Birds? 

“ _am I still able to hear?”_

Eiji flutters open his heavy eyes and looks at his surroundings. The optimistic creature's songs growing louder in tune. 

“ _It's been so long since I've heard the birds singing..”_

The morning sun was just peeking over the towering mountains. A beautiful sight of crimson red and pale orange. 

A sight Eiji hasn't seen in months.

It was refreshing. 

The stretching rays gently kissing his dirt covered cheeks as it shines through the musty broken glass window. 

“ _Where am I? What's happened? Am I by myself?”_

The first thing Eiji noticed as the breath of sleep slowly drifted from him, was that his body was screaming at him in distress. 

Bandages? 

They were hugging his lower torso and right wrist. Dark blood already making itself apparent, seeping and making dirty of the white cloth. 

The boy gradually raised himself off the bed.

Catching himself as the affliction of what he thought was a wound, was bearing down on him. 

It hurts. It hurts so badly. 

_“Bed? How did I get here? Where's-”_

Ash.

A sudden barrage of bullets stung in Eiji's ears. A quick turn of the head made Eiji immensely retching, causing his insides to slip off through the back of his throat. 

Ash? Was it Ash? 

“A-Ash!?”

Eiji limped to the broken window and stared out. 

It's such a shame that the apocalypse had swiped it's fithy hands across what was once beautiful countryside. 

Once magnificent trees were now dying in ashes. 

Carcasses of once bouncing rabbits and bushy tailed foxes were decomposing in the blood soaked earth. 

The sounds of laughter were now only a bittersweet memory. 

Gone.

It was all gone. 

Eiji grimaced.

This isn't home anymore. 

Eiji quickly eyed a slow moving corpse making it's way to the outside door. It's molder arm dangling off the maggot scarce muscle. 

Scabs and fungus growing on the festering blue and brown skin. 

The groaning and hissing that "thing" made. 

No longer human. 

Just a former shell of someone who was once trying to survive. 

Just like him. 

Just like Ash. 

Another rioting flame of bullets made the undead corpse tumble to the mud. It twitched slightly before laying already cold and yet again unmoving. Eiji just shook his head. 

 _“I'm sorry this has happened to you..,“_ Eiji whispered into nothingness. 

For closure.

For himself. 

For his remaining sanity.

Eiji scanned over and saw Ash wiping off the pistol. He ran over and plunged his knife into the temple of the undead. Securing the final blow and assuring it's death. Black blood splurtting onto Ash's already disheveled t-shirt and denim jeans. 

He was tired. Eiji knew he was exhausted. 

“A-Ash?”

Ash jerked his head up at the window then ran inside. Eiji could hear his frantic footsteps coming up the stairs. 

“Eiji! Oh my god Eiji.”

Ash threw himself at the boy and gently embraced his body, combing his shaking fingers through his curly and tangled hair.

“Thank god you're alright. Thank god..”

Ash let out a slight whimper and rocked his boyfriend in his arms.

Eiji didn't understand. 

“Ash? Is everything alright? Where are we? I thought we were-”

“Let me see your wrist.”

Eiji froze in place and his bottom lip quivered, fearing the worst. Ash stared into his chocolate brown eyes. He knew Ash was being serious. 

“W-What?”

“Eiji, I need to see your wrist. Are you running a fever?”

Ash settled the back of his hand onto Eiji's forehead. Come to think of it, Eiji was feeling a little odd.

Hot and cold at the same time. 

Sweating. 

Cold sweats.

His vision and hearing was not all there with him. 

Ash carefully unwrapped the blood soaked bandages around Eiji's scrawny wrist. 

And there it was. 

A very definable bite mark placed right in the middle of Eiji's wrist. It was oozing yellow puss and the skin was throbbing tauntingly around the wound. Ash took out a blue box and then started wrapping a fresh clean gauze tantalizing slow around the lesion. 

“Eiji, you don't remember? Fucking hell how long have we been up here?”

The blonde briskly walked over to the window looking up at the sky.

It was morning. Maybe around 7 or 8.

“I'd say about 2 or 3 days.. That's how long you've been unconscious.”

The bite still wasn't sinking in well into Eiji's mind. He didn't want it to be true.

Eiji took a couple steps back, his entire being shaking in disbelief. 

“Ash I..”

Panic started to settle into Eiji.

He was desperately trying to remember when it happened. 

The last moment Eiji could remember was Ash and himself walking into the pharmacy in the city looking for some medical supplies.

His gun in hand. 

Ash keeping Eiji close by his side.

But when? 

Ash strides back over to the shaking boy and holds him close in his arms. 

“Shh. I'm here. I'm not going to let anything happen to you, Eiji. I'm not. I promise you.”

Eiji shook his head and pushed the other away. Eiji knew he shouldn't have done that judging from the look of shock in Ash's eyes. 

“N-No! Ash, you know what happens to someone with a bite! They turn! You have to get away from me! I'm not going to let you stay. You have to go!”

Eiji started hyperventilating as he pressed his back against the wall and slid down. 

“Go Ash. Get away.. Get away!”

Eiji belted at the top of his lungs and held his head in his hands rocking back and forth on his knees. 

There was a good amount of silence before the blonde spoke up, dead panning his eyes on his lover. 

“You think I'm just going to walk away from you? After all we've been through? All the pure fucking hell we've been through?! After all the friends we have lost?”

Ash raised his voice and tried to keep the sorrowful emotion at bay. 

He tried so hard.

Ash scoffed and started pacing the bedroom.

“God damn it Eiji! What kind of person do you think I am, that I would just abandon you like this? Don't you fucking dare spat those words at me again!”

Eiji knew Ash could have a temper. 

Eiji knew Ash would occasionally raise his voice. 

It still hurt nonetheless.

Eiji came to the conclusion after Shorter had died, 

The apocalypse had taken it's conniving toll on him.

“Ash, I'm going to hold you down.. I'm.. I'm going to die eventually. I'm just dead weight.”

Ash squeezed his eyes shut and took in a deep breath. He couldn't stand seeing Eiji like this, who was once so cherry and positive, ready to conquer the world. He slowly opened his eyes again and they automatically softened. 

Trying to keep his composure. 

“Eiji, on the radio today, I heard that Washington D.C. was holding a cure for the sick. I'm going to get you there. You just..have to be strong for me, for us. Please promise me. Promise me you'll be strong.”

Ash was attempting to hold back the tears but they effortlessly flowed down his cheeks. He couldn't let anything happen to Eiji. Not in this life time. 

Eiji pushed himself up and stood on his shaking feet. He ran his hands feverishly down his face and looked up at the other. 

“I-I promise, if you'll be strong for me, Ash. I hope you know that I'm just going to grow sicker.”

“I found a car down the road with several gallons of gas. We can drive there Eiji. You're not dying on me just yet. Damn it I love you.”

Those last words nearly made Ash break down.

Eiji gave the blonde a small smile. 

“We made a promise remember? I'm always going to be with you.”

They finally closed the mind numbing gap between them and urged their needing lips together. Ash explored and held Eiji's fragile waist, tangling his fingers in the dirt occupied flannel the black haired boy was wearing. 

“Ash..” Eiji hushed into Ash's ear as he gently held the back of his neck.

Ash cupped the boys cheeks as he shivered from his lover's words.

“Eiji..”

Ash would kill for Eiji. 

He would do absolutely anything for him. 

Even if it meant it would cost him his own life. 

* * *

 

 

_Scoping out the terrain, Ash whistled then called out,_

“ _Eiji, in here hurry.”_

_Eiji pushed passed the immobile vehicles on the street and followed behind Ash into the abandoned pharmacy. Eiji held his hand gun close to his side with a duffle bag on his other._

_It had been 6 months since the undead had risen and claimed the world as theirs. Taking away families and friends. Making the world filther than it already was becoming._

_Ash and Eiji stuck it out this long, the rotting corpses robbing them of their friends._

_Shorter._

_Sing._

_Max._

_Alex._

_They had lost so many but they promised to live out their legacy one day at a time._

_The building was pretty much abandoned and already empty but they couldn't give up hope. They had to keep looking. They had to keep going._

_Eiji looked over in one of the corners and saw nearly skeletal remains of a child clutching a bug infested teddy bear. He turned pale, averting his eyes from the morbid sight._

_“Ash, I'll be in the back for medicines. Y_ _ou look for first aid kits, flashlights, blankets, things of that nature.” Eiji moved passed Ash before hearing the blonde call out for him._

_“Eiji..”_

_Eiji turned his upper torso and the tension that was once there seemed to slowly linger away._

_Those jade green eyes helped him forget the danger they were constantly facing._

_They both knew the consequences of splitting up._

_What could possibly happen._

_Eiji walked back over then stood on his tip toes ever so slightly and kissed his boyfriend's lips._

_“I'll be okay. Don't worry. You've trained me remember? I know just enough.”_

_Ash nodded and cupped Eiji's cheek before raising his head at the dropping echo of pill bottles scattering the floor of the back room._

_“I've got it, you listen to your onii-san.” Eiji gave Ash a wink and made his way to the back room. Ash never averting his gaze off of the older boy but he knew he had a job to do._

_Just like Eiji._

_The distant rattling continued._

_Never more was there a time to be cautious than now._

_Eiji slowly raised his gun as he kicked open the broken door._

_Dead silence._

_The movement and sounds stopped._

_Eiji reached for the flash light in his back pocket, his eyes never leaving or looking away from the dark room. He turned the light on and pointed it into the vast emptiness._

_Left._

_Clear._

_Right._

_Clear._

_Eiji took in a tremor of a breath and tried easing himself. He's done this plenty of times but something was making him uneasy._

_He stepped further into the fairly large room._

_The light making the objects suddenly appear before him._

_Rows upon rows of prescription medicines lined the shelves, some almost completely gone by now. The scavengers had made their pickings of them. He knew Ash and him needed some fever relievers, pain killers and maybe some sedatives. Some tiny pills littering the ground and crunched beneath his feet._

_"Shh..” Eiji unknowingly shushing his feet._

_He had to be quiet as a mouse._

_Eiji turned his body each time as he walked._

_Left._

_Right._

_Left._

_Right._

_So far, the coast was clear. No danger just yet._

_Finally, Eiji found what he was looking for on the back row of the seventh shelf._

_“Bingo.” Eiji whispered victoriously to himself._

_He scraped what was left of the pill bottles into his duffle bag, zipping it up before hearing a slight hiss and a step._

_Eiji flicked his head up and cocked his gun raising it before scanning his flashlight frantically around the dark room. Eiji knew immediately what it could be and he had killed many before._

_Taking careful steps back out of the room fully prepared on what could happen. Just a quick bullet to the head and a stab of the temple. That was it. It'll be done and over with before he knew it._

_But._

_He didn't see anything._

_He knew he heard something._

_The hairs on the back of his neck pricked their way off his sweating skin._

_Eiji took a deep shallow breath before turning and facing the door out of the room._

_Until then._

_The flashlight making the undead's contorted face ghastly prominent, from the severed eyeball hanging out of it's empty socket, from the bugs and maggots crawling their way out of it's disintegrating ear. The shriveled peeling smelling skin. It opened it's unhinged mouth and let out the most horribly morbid screech making Eiji's ears ring._

_“Shit! Shit! Shit!”_

_Eiji fell back in surprise and quickly shot a bullet at the corpse, only to have it penetrate it's shoulder._

_The thing only tripped back before groaning profusingly and falling down on Eiji's body. Thinking it would be easy to lift a dead body off himself, oh how he was wrong. The undead was so stiff and the rotting smell so pungent, it made it ten times heavier than what it really was._

_“D-Damn-it!”_

_Ash heard Eiji's cries and immediately dropped everything he was putting into his bag._

_"Eiji? Eiji?!”_

_Ash stormed into the back room desperately trying to see. His eyes only making up Eiji's fallen flashlight flickering and rolling it's way into the wall._

_“Damn-it! Eiji! Where are you!”_

_Ash scanned the room and hoped his eyes would adjust quickly to the darkness._

_Fuck._

_Where was the fucking light switch?_

_“A-Ash! Ash!”_

_Eiji pushed his hand into the corpse's throat only to make the flesh squish, peel away and decay even more by the force._

_The undead snapping and trying to bite at Eiji._

_Oh god the smell was horrible._

_Eiji mustered all he could to not vomit all over himself._

_He reached in his front pocket and pulled out a knife and unclasped it, only to accidentally cut himself. He knew the thing could smell his fresh warm blood._

_Eiji winced at the sudden pain and tried raising his hand while pushing away the corpse at the same time._

_“Eiji! I'm coming!”_

_Ash didn't care if he ran into a shelf knocking it over. He didn't care if he couldn't see well in the dark. He had to get to him._

_Eiji._

_“A-Ash get back! Get out of here!”_

_The pounding force of Eiji's hand at the cold corpse's throat eventually gave in only making it easier for the zombie to bite. The tendons and muscle finally breaking, finally taking it's chance to sink it's teeth in._

_The undead screeched again before burrowing it's rottening teeth into Eiji's upper arm._

_"A-Ah!!!”_

_Eiji threw his head back, shrieking in pure agony as he tried desperately to push the thing off of him._

_But he knew._

_It was too late._

_T_ _he damage was already done._

_The room was already becoming dizzy and his hearing was starting to fade in and out._

_“Eiji! Move!”_

_Ash dove down and plunged his hunting knife into the corpse's temple before chucking it off of Eiji._

_The blood was profusely spilling from his wrist and Eiji cried out in absolute pain._

_Twisting his body and screaming out for Ash._

_"ASH! ASH!”_

_He started to shake and convulse._

_This isn't happening._

_Not now._

_Ash lifted Eiji off of the ground before running out into the pharmacy then laying him down on half broken gurney that was stretched out in the corner of the room._

_“Eiji. Eiji. Shh. Shh. It's me. Ash. It's me. Calm down. Calm d-”_

_Ash finally saw it._

_The ticking time bomb on Eiji's wrist._

_No._

_Eiji's eyes crossed before they finally closed._

_The walls were closing in around him._

_His ear's falling deaf to the screaming of his lover._

_Was this it?_

_If it was, the last sight Eiji saw was his blonde lover staring down at him and that somehow brought him a little peace._

_Ash gently slapped Eiji's cheeks to help him wake. His breath was quickening and then he took Eiji's shoulders into his trembling hands._

_"Eiji! No! Eiji! Eiji!!!”_

_“EIJI!!!”_

**Author's Note:**

> Oof this was a mess, I'm so sorry haha.  
> Comments and kudos are much appreciated! ♡  
> Trying to make weekly updates of this and also Isn't It Lovely.


End file.
